College leaders find themselves on hot seat

Media General News Service
Published: August 16, 2008

Think of a college president as a politician, a businessman, a cocktail party host, a cheerleader — and even a beggar of sorts.

Virginia Commonwealth University President Eugene P. Trani played all those roles and made his retirement announcement Thursday in the face of health problems and the many pressures of the job.

Several college leaders in Virginia and elsewhere have recently resigned under pressure, been fired, heard critics call for them to step down or called it quits early.

“We serve so many constituencies that it is often difficult to manage the balance,” said James Madison University President Linwood H. Rose, who oversees a school of about 18,000 students.

“The rub is that what might matter least to one person can be critically important to another.”

Many demands

Those constituencies are complex, said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity College in Washington. Recently, she wrote to a newspaper:

“On any given day, I’m expected to raise capital, negotiate loans, manage investments, cheer for the lacrosse team, improve shareholder value, retain a top-notch management team, satisfy the alumni, understand the latest technology, meet with students, lobby for less regulation, manage the infrastructure of a small city, address the concerns of the faculty, and wax eloquent on Shakespeare’s relevance in the age of Jay-Z.”

“The radar screen for a college president has grown in size and complexity,” said McGuire, whose private school enrolls 1,700 students. “The environment we operate in today also has the college responsible for every single thing that happens to a student or faculty member.”

In a note to his staff about his decision to retire early, Trani referred to the demands:

“Obviously all universities go through challenging times, but clearly, this summer has been a difficult one.”

Jack Maguire, chairman of Maguire Associates, an educational-consulting firm in Concord, Mass., said that “what causes president’s to crash and burn is losing the confidence of their board. The board finds out they don’t walk on water but in fact skate on thin ice.”

Meanwhile, Maguire said, college presidents “are kept up at night worried about financial problems and indirectly with enrollment.”

Some presidents do feel overwhelmed, he said. “The best or luckiest presidents are able to delegate to a strong staff and manage all this and enjoy it like it’s a political kind of life.”

No longer leisurely

It wasn’t always such a demanding position.

“Years and years ago, life was quite different” on college campuses, said Claire Van Ummersen, vice president of the Center for Effective Leadership at the American Council on Education in Washington. “It was a much, much more leisurely pace. Today, universities run 24/7.”

Van Ummersen, who served as president of the University of New Hampshire and Cleveland State University, said that in the past, “there was nothing but time to reflect and think. That part of the university is still there but on top of it you have the terribly complex structure of a corporation.”

John T. Casteen III, who has been the University of Virginia’s president for 18 years, said it’s a big job. “The work involves making hard decisions, articulating and living and enforcing high standards.”

Casteen has long said that the biggest challenge facing colleges such as UVa is the lack of funding from the state. Other presidents said the challenges are in retaining students and star faculty members, keeping the student body diverse, managing budgets that can run more than $1 billion and, of course, raising money.

“Certainly fundraising, whether private or from the commonwealth, does take a larger percentage of a president’s time than it did 20 years ago,” said JMU’s Rose. “The time it requires has to come from someplace, but it is particularly rewarding to see a successful match between a prospective donor’s interests and the university’s needs.”

Since the Virginia Tech massacre, safety also has become an even more urgent issue.

“The primary issue facing a president today has much to do with crisis-management,” said Patricia P. Cormier, the president of Longwood University. “We spend substantial time on managing the inevitable crises that confront campuses every day, most of which have to do with the safety and security of our students.”

Jobs still rewarding

Most college presidents do enjoy their prestigious, highly public lives.

“These jobs are the most exciting and rewarding work that I can imagine,” said Casteen, whose fundraising skills are near-legendary. “One gets to plan, then build the university’s future, and in the process build personal freedom for students, rewarding careers for staff and faculty members, and society’s capacity to improve itself. Despite the national economic downturn, times are pretty good just now.”

Said Rose, whose university has become one of the state’s most popular schools: “For those of us who have been at it for a while, the opportunity to see graduates become successful alumni who work to make our communities better places to live and work tends to justify the long hours.”

But expect an overwhelming change on the college presidency landscape within the next three to five years, Maguire said.

The average age of a college president is in the early to mid-60s. Casteen is 64.

“We’re going to see a huge turnover in short order,” Maguire said. “I think it’s a good thing for new blood to come in.”